Amy&Dan
DIS Legend
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2004
- Messages
- 15,958
Cast:
Me, Amy, 40, loves to plan for Disney trips
Dan, Turned 38 on this trip, loves to have me plan Disney trips!
Matthew, 11, love CA Screamin, Goofy and Stitch
Maria, 9, loves everything at Disneyland, Disneyworld, Disney Store, Disney Channel and has now managed to talk Grandpa into Disney on Ice tickets for next month.
On Thursday, less than three weeks ago my kids and I decided to watch one of our old Disney trip videos. We love to do this all the time and on this particular day it was our February, 2004 trip. That was probably my all time favorite Disneyland trip. We had no crowds, perfect weather and it was just so fun it got me to thinking about how fun it would be to go to Disneyland this Februray too during my kids track off time! So I casually mention this to Dan, bear in mind February is in just a few days, and he tells me to check pricing and see what I can find. I do and there on Expedia is 5 nights, at either the Tropicana or HoJo, plus 4 tickets on United for just a hair over $1300. This is so great I would be criminal not to jump on it, so I purchase that package so fast my head spins. We spring this on the kids that night, who cannot believe how lucky they are to have such crazy, Disney addicted parents. We only have two weeks to wait which makes the whole thing even better!
Thursday, February 9:
I spend this whole day packing, cleaning and marveling at how amazingly impulsive I have become. I was way behind schedule because I had been sick so I had to pack, clean, run errands and be ready to go by 3:00 p.m. Somehow I get this all done and we head to DIA laughing our behinds off at the grim weather forecast, knowing we won't be here to freeze since L.A. is forecasting warm, sunny weather. We get to the airport to hear from the United Ticket Agent who talks like a preschool teacher that our plane is "broken" and we just need to head to the gate and maybe they can find us a "brand new plane". I find this broken plane thing kind of irritating and don't particularly care for the United gate agent's cheerful, baby talk of "we'll sure try to find you a new plane" but whatever. We also find out our seat assignments are no more, that the "new plane" will be smaller and so we are assigned 4 middle seats all over the plane. Mrs. Cheerful tells us the gate agent will try to get us at least a bit closer. We arrive to the empty gate, share some McDonald's fries and wonder when the gate agent and our new plane will arrive. Gradually the gate fills up with nothing but guys in suits, travelling on business, talking on cell phones. And then us, all dressed up in Disney shirts, Maria wearing her Minnie ears, Matthew wearing his Stitch hat, wondering if our broken plane is being fixed or what. Finally the gate agent arrives, finds us seats that are closer but not together. I hate that, because all of these business men don't look like they will be too worried about getting my kids off the burning plane if it crashes since they will be too busy rescuing their laptops. I hate to fly by the way, and always expect the plane to crash so I always prepare for the worst. We board with all the CEO's and Maria starts to cry. She doesn't want to sit by herself. I ask the guy sitting next to her, in his nice aisle seat if he wouldn't just love to trade seats with me and he tells me no way. But the guy sitting next to me is a dad so he trades. The other guy is now peeved because Nice Trader Guy is a lot bigger than my daughter and he doesn't want to be smushed. Oh well. Matthew is right behind me and I am fine with that, I have no idea where Dan is but figure he can take care of himself. So off we go, we are headed to Disneyland on our BRAND NEW PLANE!
We arrive at Orange County, meet up with my father in law Gordon, who lives in L.A., have dinner at the El Torito across the street and just marvel at the beauty of spontaneous planning/combustion depending on how you look at dropping $1300 for a last minute trip to Disneyland. We head to the Tropicana. I am a bit wary because I love to stay onsite. We have stayed at the HoJo and the Park Inn before, both were fine but I just love the Disneyland Hotel. Also, I had read on Tripadvisor a lot of reports about plastic sheets, the free but crummy, nasty breakfast and I was all set to hate the place. Surprise, I loved it. We all did. The room was nice sized, and you could tell it had been redone recently. It was also spotless. So we settle in, head to bed knowing tomorrow we will be at the Happiest Place on Earth!
Friday, February 10:
We arrive at Disneyland about 8:45 for a 9:00 a.m. opening. Crowds don't look too bad and we are on Peter Pan by 9:10. This is always our first ride partly because we are suckers for routine but mostly because the line will only become terrible as the day wears on. We spend the rest of the morning riding rides in Fantasyland and then head to Space to ride using the fastpass Dan retrieved right after Peter Pan. We decide to head over to DCA for lunch and we are anxious to ride Monsters Inc. We ride Monsters Inc first. This is one of the few Disney movies I have not seen. So Matthew and Maria fill me on the plot during the line. It said 5 minutes but we waited 20. There is no fast pass for this ride
which is too bad. Also, some of the que is not shaded, I can only imagine how fun that will be in July! We all loved the ride, especially the part with all the doors. Unfortunately, this is the only time we will ride it the whole trip! We had lunch at Taste Pilots which is a favorite of ours. We then rode Soarin using fastpass but even the standby was only around 20 minutes. It was nice and warm today which felt great. Then we rode Screamin several times. This was down for our last trip so it was great to be on it again. We headed back to Disneyland for awhile to grab more fastpasses and ride fastpasses we had collected earlier. We also saw the parade. Then we went back to the Tropicana to change into pants and jackets as it was cooling off as it got dark. Then back to DCA so the kids could do Animations for awhile. I just sat on one of the comfy couches and watched the movie clips. I frankly could have done that all night! We had dinner in the Pacific Wharf area, while we admired the lights of Paradise Pier. We all agreed the day would have been perfect if only the Electrical Parade had been running! After dinner and one last ride on Screamin, we headed back to Disneyland to get a spot for Remember. We sat in the hub area and enjoyed the fireworks as always. After the fireworks we had mulitple fastpasses to use up so even though the crowds were pretty bad we had plenty to ride. By 11:00 we were beat so we headed back to the Tropicana. We exited Indy at 11:00 and by 11:12 were in our room at the hotel. Love that location!!
Saturday, February 11: Happy Birthday Dan!!
We slept in. Today was EE for Disneyland and since we had no park hoppers and weren't staying onsite just decided to head to DCA instead. We got there at around 10:30 and the lines for Monsters Inc. were very long. The cm told me around 40 minutes at least. So we rode TOT instead, which had no line so we rode it again. Now I love TOT, I love all thrill rides at Disney and I am lucky enough to have two kids old enough and daring enough to ride them with me. But if they weren't that way, please know I would not EVER make them do what the people who rode TOT with us the second time did to their daughter. This poor little kid was 4 I heard them say, and big enough to ride, but man oh man she didn't want to. That kid begged, cried and then resorted to a screaming tantrum. They dragged her on the ride, why the cm didn't say something I don't know. Naturally she was terrified. You could hear her screams the whole time. It really made me mad, why do that to a little kid? They were a family of 6, I mean they could have taken turns for God's sake. They laughed but the rest of the elevator wasn't. I also heard them say it was their first ride of the trip, I'll wager that poor little kid didn't want to ride another thing the rest of their day. As we exited that area of DCA we noticed how packed the park was. Usually on a Saturday we don't find crowds too bad over there but today was different. We were hot and tired and out of fastpasses so we rode GRR got soaked and headed to the hotel to swim and rest. The Tropicana's pool is about the size of my dining room but Matthew and Maria had fun, so no problem. I did some laundry and read while they played and Dan napped. Then we headed to Goofy's for our ps for Dan's birthday dinner. Gordon met us there and we had probably the best meal we have had there. I don't know if they have a new chef or if we were just really hungry but it was wonderful. And tons of characters so that was nice too. Gordon was blocked out with his So. Cal pass so we said goodbye to him and headed to Disneyland. The crowds looked liked a typical Saturday night at Disneyland. I was hoping Sunday and Monday wouldn't be too awful, I knew that most area schools had Monday off and with the warm weather was preparing for a lot of people. We saw Remember from the hub area again and then rode Splash but decided to head back around 10:00 so we could get an early start on Sunday.
Sunday, February 12:
We got to the park at 8:45 for a 9:00 opening. I could not believe how many people were already lined up on Main Street. I knew crowds would be bad but nothing prepared me for how bad they got that day. We did ride Dumbo with only a two minute wait and Matthew and Maria got the gold Dumbo which was cool. After that we headed to Big Thunder Mountain while Dan got fastpasses for Space Mountain. Thankfully we knew to get fastpasses as often as possible and we managed, but the walkways were crowded beyond belief by around 11:00. It was also downright hot which was kind of nice but sapped our energy. We decided to ride the monorail to DTD and have lunch at RFC. We have the safari card so we got seated within about 20 minutes. After a big lunch we decided to just head to the hotel for a rest. We all took a nap and woke up raring to go. Disneyland was still packed but at least it was cooler now and we had more energy. We used our faspasses from earlier and decided we didn't feel like sitting on the ground for Remember. We saw the parade again, sharing a bench near the Matterhorn with a group of three ladies, two of whom were also from Denver. Then we headed back to the Small World area for Remember. We got a place to sit and then Dan and I took turns taking the kids to ride things. We also met a very nice couple from Scotland who was spending their last day of vacation at Disneyland. We really enjoyed talking with them. Unfortunately they kept coming over the PA and saying the fireworks might be cancelled due to winds. Then they came on saying they would be held only to be told a few minutes later they were canclled for sure. I was bummed for our Scottish friends since that was their one and only opportunity to see them. I was also bummed at the human nature of many people around us who acted pretty awful towards any and every cm they could find that the fireworks were cancelled. One cm assured a man the fire marshall makes the decision and that it was for safety only to have the guy call her a f****** liar. Real nice. We said goodbye to our new friends and headed back to the Tropicana. I was hopeful the crowds would be better on Monday but knew they would probably be just as bad. But with fastpass we had managed to have a pretty good ride day and as always, a crowded day at Disneyland is better than a day at home!
Monday, February 13:
Crowds again! We arrived at 8:20 to the gate and were pretty far back in a long line to get in. It was EE day again so I knew Fantasyland would already be packed by the time we got in. We actually got very close to the front of the line near the rope but since we chose not to run to our first ride, and since EE guests were already in the park didn't get to be the first in line! We did ride Mr. Toad and Alice before heading over to Frontierland to ride BTMRR. Then we headed to DCA hoping to ride Monsters Inc. but a long line was already in place by the time we got there. We fastpassed Soarin then rode TOT then Dan took the kids on Screamin a couple of times while I put bandaids on blisters that were suddenly sprouting on my toes. Then we fastpassed Soarin again with only one ticket since Gordon was joining us later and we would need five fastpasses. We headed back to Disneyland and met Gordon for our noon ps at Blue Bayou. We had a great lunch, Dan and I split the Monte Cristo three ways with Matthew. I am still amazed at how huge and rich that sandwich is! We rode Pirates after lunch, we had to wait for almost 40 minutes in the wheelchair access line because there were so many scooters and wheelchairs. I asked another woman on our boat how long they had waited in the regular line and she said 25 minutes. I wish all the lines could accomodate scooters and chairs to save the hassle of either a longer line or having to endure the stares of hostility from people who think you are getting a better deal in the scooter accessible line! After that we decided to ride Splash using our fastpasses we had gotten earlier. Gordon went in through the exit and the rest of us used our fastpasses, meeting up with him inside the loading area. This worked out better than Pirates since we went through separate lines and were still able to ride with Gordon. Also, even with fastpass we waited around 20 minutes the ride was so packed. No way could Gordon have handled that. Dan took the kids on Tom Sawyer's Island while Gordon waited in the shade and I got fastpasses for Buzz. Then we headed over to DCA to ride Soarin, then Dan, Gordon and the kids saw Block Party Bash. By now my feet were agony from blisters so I headed back to the hotel, changed shoes, grabbed jackets for everybody and met them back in the park for the parade. We had seen it twice but Gordon hadn't and we enjoy it so much, seeing it a third time was no problem. After the parade we had dinner at the Plaza. Again, I am amazed at how huge the portions are. Three dinners and two side salads for 5 people and we couldn't finish everything. But the food was really good and we always enjoy that setting. After dinner we headed back to the area near Small World again hoping the fireworks would happen. No announcements were ever made so we knew we were in luck this night. Gordon saved our spots while Dan and I used our fastpasses from earlier for Space and Buzz. Then Matthew wanted to go hang out with Grandpa so Dan and I took Maria on Storybookland Canal Boats. Dan then decided he wanted to go hang out too, so Maria and I rode Casey Jr.'s Circus Train and the tea cups twice. I noticed that the park seemed much less crowded than Sunday night. I guess it was a school night so people left earlier. I was wishing that the park was open until midnight again but it was closing at 10:00. We saw the fireworks and I really almost like them better back by Its a Small World. You can sit on the bench/wall things and it is so much less crowded. Also the affects on Small World are really neat. We all felt sad our trip was over but happy that we had managed to make such an unexpected visit to Disneyland! Gordon left as soon as Remember was over and Dan and I decided to see if we could ride the Matterhorn one last time. It was down and they were re-booting it up. I don't know what the deal was but they actually did open it back up for the very few people in line which was nice. We rode it knowing it was our last ride of the trip. Then we enjoyed Main Street and the castle sharing a Mickey cookie and some hot chocolate. We walked the short walk back to the hotel trying to calculate how many days until our June trip!
Tuesday, February 14:
Gordon met us at Mimi's at 9:30. We have Mimi's at home and always enjoy it so it was nice to enjoy it in Anaheim as well. I told the kids to eat up since lunch was going to be the proverbial bag of pretzels on the plane. We had a great breakfast, then walked back to the hotel, got our stuff and had Gordon take us to the airport. This time our plane was not broken, our seats were still assigned and together, and we were touching down at DIA in nothing flat. It was a great trip. The crowds were really intense at times but with fastpass we never lacked for things to ride and do. Friday was wonderful crowds wise so that was nice. We were bummed we only got to do Monster's Inc. once and we also somehow managed to miss Aladdin for the second trip in a row. That gives us something to aspire to do for our next trip, which incidentally will begin 4 months from today! Thanks for reading!
Me, Amy, 40, loves to plan for Disney trips
Dan, Turned 38 on this trip, loves to have me plan Disney trips!
Matthew, 11, love CA Screamin, Goofy and Stitch
Maria, 9, loves everything at Disneyland, Disneyworld, Disney Store, Disney Channel and has now managed to talk Grandpa into Disney on Ice tickets for next month.
On Thursday, less than three weeks ago my kids and I decided to watch one of our old Disney trip videos. We love to do this all the time and on this particular day it was our February, 2004 trip. That was probably my all time favorite Disneyland trip. We had no crowds, perfect weather and it was just so fun it got me to thinking about how fun it would be to go to Disneyland this Februray too during my kids track off time! So I casually mention this to Dan, bear in mind February is in just a few days, and he tells me to check pricing and see what I can find. I do and there on Expedia is 5 nights, at either the Tropicana or HoJo, plus 4 tickets on United for just a hair over $1300. This is so great I would be criminal not to jump on it, so I purchase that package so fast my head spins. We spring this on the kids that night, who cannot believe how lucky they are to have such crazy, Disney addicted parents. We only have two weeks to wait which makes the whole thing even better!
Thursday, February 9:
I spend this whole day packing, cleaning and marveling at how amazingly impulsive I have become. I was way behind schedule because I had been sick so I had to pack, clean, run errands and be ready to go by 3:00 p.m. Somehow I get this all done and we head to DIA laughing our behinds off at the grim weather forecast, knowing we won't be here to freeze since L.A. is forecasting warm, sunny weather. We get to the airport to hear from the United Ticket Agent who talks like a preschool teacher that our plane is "broken" and we just need to head to the gate and maybe they can find us a "brand new plane". I find this broken plane thing kind of irritating and don't particularly care for the United gate agent's cheerful, baby talk of "we'll sure try to find you a new plane" but whatever. We also find out our seat assignments are no more, that the "new plane" will be smaller and so we are assigned 4 middle seats all over the plane. Mrs. Cheerful tells us the gate agent will try to get us at least a bit closer. We arrive to the empty gate, share some McDonald's fries and wonder when the gate agent and our new plane will arrive. Gradually the gate fills up with nothing but guys in suits, travelling on business, talking on cell phones. And then us, all dressed up in Disney shirts, Maria wearing her Minnie ears, Matthew wearing his Stitch hat, wondering if our broken plane is being fixed or what. Finally the gate agent arrives, finds us seats that are closer but not together. I hate that, because all of these business men don't look like they will be too worried about getting my kids off the burning plane if it crashes since they will be too busy rescuing their laptops. I hate to fly by the way, and always expect the plane to crash so I always prepare for the worst. We board with all the CEO's and Maria starts to cry. She doesn't want to sit by herself. I ask the guy sitting next to her, in his nice aisle seat if he wouldn't just love to trade seats with me and he tells me no way. But the guy sitting next to me is a dad so he trades. The other guy is now peeved because Nice Trader Guy is a lot bigger than my daughter and he doesn't want to be smushed. Oh well. Matthew is right behind me and I am fine with that, I have no idea where Dan is but figure he can take care of himself. So off we go, we are headed to Disneyland on our BRAND NEW PLANE!
We arrive at Orange County, meet up with my father in law Gordon, who lives in L.A., have dinner at the El Torito across the street and just marvel at the beauty of spontaneous planning/combustion depending on how you look at dropping $1300 for a last minute trip to Disneyland. We head to the Tropicana. I am a bit wary because I love to stay onsite. We have stayed at the HoJo and the Park Inn before, both were fine but I just love the Disneyland Hotel. Also, I had read on Tripadvisor a lot of reports about plastic sheets, the free but crummy, nasty breakfast and I was all set to hate the place. Surprise, I loved it. We all did. The room was nice sized, and you could tell it had been redone recently. It was also spotless. So we settle in, head to bed knowing tomorrow we will be at the Happiest Place on Earth!
Friday, February 10:
We arrive at Disneyland about 8:45 for a 9:00 a.m. opening. Crowds don't look too bad and we are on Peter Pan by 9:10. This is always our first ride partly because we are suckers for routine but mostly because the line will only become terrible as the day wears on. We spend the rest of the morning riding rides in Fantasyland and then head to Space to ride using the fastpass Dan retrieved right after Peter Pan. We decide to head over to DCA for lunch and we are anxious to ride Monsters Inc. We ride Monsters Inc first. This is one of the few Disney movies I have not seen. So Matthew and Maria fill me on the plot during the line. It said 5 minutes but we waited 20. There is no fast pass for this ride
which is too bad. Also, some of the que is not shaded, I can only imagine how fun that will be in July! We all loved the ride, especially the part with all the doors. Unfortunately, this is the only time we will ride it the whole trip! We had lunch at Taste Pilots which is a favorite of ours. We then rode Soarin using fastpass but even the standby was only around 20 minutes. It was nice and warm today which felt great. Then we rode Screamin several times. This was down for our last trip so it was great to be on it again. We headed back to Disneyland for awhile to grab more fastpasses and ride fastpasses we had collected earlier. We also saw the parade. Then we went back to the Tropicana to change into pants and jackets as it was cooling off as it got dark. Then back to DCA so the kids could do Animations for awhile. I just sat on one of the comfy couches and watched the movie clips. I frankly could have done that all night! We had dinner in the Pacific Wharf area, while we admired the lights of Paradise Pier. We all agreed the day would have been perfect if only the Electrical Parade had been running! After dinner and one last ride on Screamin, we headed back to Disneyland to get a spot for Remember. We sat in the hub area and enjoyed the fireworks as always. After the fireworks we had mulitple fastpasses to use up so even though the crowds were pretty bad we had plenty to ride. By 11:00 we were beat so we headed back to the Tropicana. We exited Indy at 11:00 and by 11:12 were in our room at the hotel. Love that location!!Saturday, February 11: Happy Birthday Dan!!
We slept in. Today was EE for Disneyland and since we had no park hoppers and weren't staying onsite just decided to head to DCA instead. We got there at around 10:30 and the lines for Monsters Inc. were very long. The cm told me around 40 minutes at least. So we rode TOT instead, which had no line so we rode it again. Now I love TOT, I love all thrill rides at Disney and I am lucky enough to have two kids old enough and daring enough to ride them with me. But if they weren't that way, please know I would not EVER make them do what the people who rode TOT with us the second time did to their daughter. This poor little kid was 4 I heard them say, and big enough to ride, but man oh man she didn't want to. That kid begged, cried and then resorted to a screaming tantrum. They dragged her on the ride, why the cm didn't say something I don't know. Naturally she was terrified. You could hear her screams the whole time. It really made me mad, why do that to a little kid? They were a family of 6, I mean they could have taken turns for God's sake. They laughed but the rest of the elevator wasn't. I also heard them say it was their first ride of the trip, I'll wager that poor little kid didn't want to ride another thing the rest of their day. As we exited that area of DCA we noticed how packed the park was. Usually on a Saturday we don't find crowds too bad over there but today was different. We were hot and tired and out of fastpasses so we rode GRR got soaked and headed to the hotel to swim and rest. The Tropicana's pool is about the size of my dining room but Matthew and Maria had fun, so no problem. I did some laundry and read while they played and Dan napped. Then we headed to Goofy's for our ps for Dan's birthday dinner. Gordon met us there and we had probably the best meal we have had there. I don't know if they have a new chef or if we were just really hungry but it was wonderful. And tons of characters so that was nice too. Gordon was blocked out with his So. Cal pass so we said goodbye to him and headed to Disneyland. The crowds looked liked a typical Saturday night at Disneyland. I was hoping Sunday and Monday wouldn't be too awful, I knew that most area schools had Monday off and with the warm weather was preparing for a lot of people. We saw Remember from the hub area again and then rode Splash but decided to head back around 10:00 so we could get an early start on Sunday.
Sunday, February 12:
We got to the park at 8:45 for a 9:00 opening. I could not believe how many people were already lined up on Main Street. I knew crowds would be bad but nothing prepared me for how bad they got that day. We did ride Dumbo with only a two minute wait and Matthew and Maria got the gold Dumbo which was cool. After that we headed to Big Thunder Mountain while Dan got fastpasses for Space Mountain. Thankfully we knew to get fastpasses as often as possible and we managed, but the walkways were crowded beyond belief by around 11:00. It was also downright hot which was kind of nice but sapped our energy. We decided to ride the monorail to DTD and have lunch at RFC. We have the safari card so we got seated within about 20 minutes. After a big lunch we decided to just head to the hotel for a rest. We all took a nap and woke up raring to go. Disneyland was still packed but at least it was cooler now and we had more energy. We used our faspasses from earlier and decided we didn't feel like sitting on the ground for Remember. We saw the parade again, sharing a bench near the Matterhorn with a group of three ladies, two of whom were also from Denver. Then we headed back to the Small World area for Remember. We got a place to sit and then Dan and I took turns taking the kids to ride things. We also met a very nice couple from Scotland who was spending their last day of vacation at Disneyland. We really enjoyed talking with them. Unfortunately they kept coming over the PA and saying the fireworks might be cancelled due to winds. Then they came on saying they would be held only to be told a few minutes later they were canclled for sure. I was bummed for our Scottish friends since that was their one and only opportunity to see them. I was also bummed at the human nature of many people around us who acted pretty awful towards any and every cm they could find that the fireworks were cancelled. One cm assured a man the fire marshall makes the decision and that it was for safety only to have the guy call her a f****** liar. Real nice. We said goodbye to our new friends and headed back to the Tropicana. I was hopeful the crowds would be better on Monday but knew they would probably be just as bad. But with fastpass we had managed to have a pretty good ride day and as always, a crowded day at Disneyland is better than a day at home!
Monday, February 13:
Crowds again! We arrived at 8:20 to the gate and were pretty far back in a long line to get in. It was EE day again so I knew Fantasyland would already be packed by the time we got in. We actually got very close to the front of the line near the rope but since we chose not to run to our first ride, and since EE guests were already in the park didn't get to be the first in line! We did ride Mr. Toad and Alice before heading over to Frontierland to ride BTMRR. Then we headed to DCA hoping to ride Monsters Inc. but a long line was already in place by the time we got there. We fastpassed Soarin then rode TOT then Dan took the kids on Screamin a couple of times while I put bandaids on blisters that were suddenly sprouting on my toes. Then we fastpassed Soarin again with only one ticket since Gordon was joining us later and we would need five fastpasses. We headed back to Disneyland and met Gordon for our noon ps at Blue Bayou. We had a great lunch, Dan and I split the Monte Cristo three ways with Matthew. I am still amazed at how huge and rich that sandwich is! We rode Pirates after lunch, we had to wait for almost 40 minutes in the wheelchair access line because there were so many scooters and wheelchairs. I asked another woman on our boat how long they had waited in the regular line and she said 25 minutes. I wish all the lines could accomodate scooters and chairs to save the hassle of either a longer line or having to endure the stares of hostility from people who think you are getting a better deal in the scooter accessible line! After that we decided to ride Splash using our fastpasses we had gotten earlier. Gordon went in through the exit and the rest of us used our fastpasses, meeting up with him inside the loading area. This worked out better than Pirates since we went through separate lines and were still able to ride with Gordon. Also, even with fastpass we waited around 20 minutes the ride was so packed. No way could Gordon have handled that. Dan took the kids on Tom Sawyer's Island while Gordon waited in the shade and I got fastpasses for Buzz. Then we headed over to DCA to ride Soarin, then Dan, Gordon and the kids saw Block Party Bash. By now my feet were agony from blisters so I headed back to the hotel, changed shoes, grabbed jackets for everybody and met them back in the park for the parade. We had seen it twice but Gordon hadn't and we enjoy it so much, seeing it a third time was no problem. After the parade we had dinner at the Plaza. Again, I am amazed at how huge the portions are. Three dinners and two side salads for 5 people and we couldn't finish everything. But the food was really good and we always enjoy that setting. After dinner we headed back to the area near Small World again hoping the fireworks would happen. No announcements were ever made so we knew we were in luck this night. Gordon saved our spots while Dan and I used our fastpasses from earlier for Space and Buzz. Then Matthew wanted to go hang out with Grandpa so Dan and I took Maria on Storybookland Canal Boats. Dan then decided he wanted to go hang out too, so Maria and I rode Casey Jr.'s Circus Train and the tea cups twice. I noticed that the park seemed much less crowded than Sunday night. I guess it was a school night so people left earlier. I was wishing that the park was open until midnight again but it was closing at 10:00. We saw the fireworks and I really almost like them better back by Its a Small World. You can sit on the bench/wall things and it is so much less crowded. Also the affects on Small World are really neat. We all felt sad our trip was over but happy that we had managed to make such an unexpected visit to Disneyland! Gordon left as soon as Remember was over and Dan and I decided to see if we could ride the Matterhorn one last time. It was down and they were re-booting it up. I don't know what the deal was but they actually did open it back up for the very few people in line which was nice. We rode it knowing it was our last ride of the trip. Then we enjoyed Main Street and the castle sharing a Mickey cookie and some hot chocolate. We walked the short walk back to the hotel trying to calculate how many days until our June trip!
Tuesday, February 14:
Gordon met us at Mimi's at 9:30. We have Mimi's at home and always enjoy it so it was nice to enjoy it in Anaheim as well. I told the kids to eat up since lunch was going to be the proverbial bag of pretzels on the plane. We had a great breakfast, then walked back to the hotel, got our stuff and had Gordon take us to the airport. This time our plane was not broken, our seats were still assigned and together, and we were touching down at DIA in nothing flat. It was a great trip. The crowds were really intense at times but with fastpass we never lacked for things to ride and do. Friday was wonderful crowds wise so that was nice. We were bummed we only got to do Monster's Inc. once and we also somehow managed to miss Aladdin for the second trip in a row. That gives us something to aspire to do for our next trip, which incidentally will begin 4 months from today! Thanks for reading!
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